Apple - Applications Don't Show Up in Spotlight

Loading the metadata plist worked for me:

Turn off spotlight:

sudo mdutil -a -i off

Unload it:

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

Load It:

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

Turn on spotlight again:

sudo mdutil -a -i on

Now everything is being reindexed as expected.

In newer versions of macOS, just turning indexing off then back on again resolves the issue.

Had this issue and nothing worked until I rebuilt the index using this in the Terminal:

sudo mdutil -E -i on /

As an alternative you can also use a free app called Alfred which has a lot more features.

(I'm not affiliated with Alfred in anyway)

Hope this helps!

When I tried Anil's solution, I got:

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist: Operation not permitted while System Integrity Protection is engaged

Instead, I followed these instructions, and it worked:

1. Go to System Preferences, Select Spotlight
2. Go to the Privacy tab in the Spotlight system preferences
3. Click the Plus button
4. Press Shift-Command-C to reveal your hard drives (if they are not available otherwise), or simply navigate to your hard drive (most likely MacintoshHD)
5. If you have more than one hard drive, hold the Command key and click your various drives to add them to your selection
6. Click the “Choose” button to add them to the Privacy list
7. Ignore the warning.
8. Remove the hard drive by clicking the minus sign.
9. Boom, no more sad days.